


Ties that Bond

by Xparrot



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M, Mate or Die, Season/Series 06, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-18
Updated: 2007-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 02:09:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/pseuds/Xparrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mate or die. Um. Kinda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ties that Bond

**Author's Note:**

> So this is why I have issues ficcing in large fandoms—every idea I have, I become paranoid that someone else has written it already. What's one way around this? Why, to write an idea that _everyone_ else has written before! In this spirit, I bring you Kryptonian pair-bonding Clex fic. Same great cliché taste, half the smut. Er. Though not for lack of trying.
> 
> Set a bit after 6th season, in this vague indefinite I-haven't-actually-seen-any-6th-season-eps-except-the-premiere way. Warnings for an oblique reference to a relationship that might involve Lana. Revoltingly sappy, relentlessly silly. What can I say? Clex brings out the worst in me.

"What?"

"I'm an alien life-form, and I pair-bonded with you," Clark repeated.

Lex allowed his eyelids one lizard-slow blink. "Could you say that one more time?"

Clark gazed at him solicitously. "Lex, do you have a cold or something? Are you losing your hearing?"

Lex waved his hand. "No, I heard you the first time. This is to make sure the bugs catch it." At Clark's panicked gulp he added, "My bugs, not anyone else's. I fortunately did a sweep of the castle this morning. I just want to make sure this is recorded. For posterity. I can add it to everything else in the room." He shot Clark a measuring look. "In the spirit of disclosure, I should tell you that I re-reopened my investigation some three years ago."

"Yeah, I figured you had."

"I'm not planning to destroy this one in the interests of a non-extant friendship."

Clark showed an astonishing lack of giving a damn, as compared to past performance. "Lex, you won't need the room or the investigation anymore."

"I won't."

"You'll have me. I'll answer whatever questions you have. Honestly."

"Honestly."

Clark raised his hands, fingers spread. "I swear. It's over with. I can't lie to you anymore."

"So. The bridge."

"You hit me, I ripped open the Porsche's roof, dragged you out, saved your life."

"The spaceship."

"I came down in it as a baby. My parents hid it in the storm cellar."

"The meteor rocks."

"They're called kryptonite. They make me weak."

"The crystal in my airplane."

"I can fly."

"The bleeding."

"I've lost my powers occasionally. Long stories. Which time do you want first?"

"It can wait." Lex drummed his fingers on his obsidian-black desk. "And this is all because you're an alien."

"From the planet Krypton. Which blew up a while ago, but I can show you where it was. Can you google up a starchart?"

"It can wait," Lex said again. He stilled his fingers with effort. "You're an alien. And you..."

Clark's deadly serious expression broke into the old sunny grin that Lex hadn't seen in years. "I pair-bonded with you."

"Pair-bonded."

"Yeah. For, um, mating. Um, like Star Trek, you know? Spock goes into pon farr, has to mate or die?"

"You're an alien. Which pair-bonds. Like a science fiction character."

"I'm an alien," Clark said, reasonably, "that makes me a sci-fi character by default."

"So is your species telepathic, too? Like Vulcans?"

"Umm, no. I have x-ray vision, though. And heat vision."

"Heat vision."

"Want me to show you?" Something unnatural—no, preternatural; alien-natural—glowed in the depths of Clark's eyes, green transposed to orange.

"That's not necessary," Lex said, already feeling the warmth of that stare on his skin, an uneasy pressure like too strong sunlight. "I believe you."

"You do?" Clark's beam was blinding.

He had made the decision to believe Clark some time before. Even as he had gathered new trophies for the third floor room, one at a time, he had believed everything Clark had told him, without reservation, without question. It would make the pain of the ultimate betrayal that much more exquisite. He had been waiting for it. Looking forward to the moment when Clark made a misstep too absurdly great for even him to try to talk his way out of. At that moment, everything Lex was moving toward, everything he was becoming, would be vindicated, and the phoenix of his justified anger would rise from the pyre of their false friendship. There would be no stopping it. No consideration of limiting himself anymore, ever again.

And now was the moment. The destined time of reckoning.

It was not exactly what Lex had had in mind.

"You're an alien."

Clark nodded eagerly.

"And you—"—Are faster than a speeding bullet. Are stronger than a locomotive. Can _fly_. Have _heat vision_, for chrissakes, and how is that even _possible_, forget the patent irrationality of spontaneous levitation, the capacity for energy focus/collection/expulsion in a human-shaped eyeball lens is simply too—"—are pair-bonded to me."

First things first.

Clark nodded even more eagerly.

"What does that even mean?"

"I don't know for sure," Clark said. "My people's customs are, uh, not...I mean, I didn't grow up with them, and, uh, you know, nature versus nurture, biology or society, the AI's not really been clear. But. You were the first person I kissed. Sort of. After the bridge, I mean, I wasn't meaning to, like that, but. The specifics don't seem to matter, far as I can tell. The thing is, we're pair-bonded. We've been pair-bonded since then."

"Clark." Lex set his hands flat on his desk. He had yet to stand up since Clark had entered; Clark had yet to take a seat. He was now pacing back and forth in front of Lex's desk, but stopped when Lex said his name. "Practically speaking, that is, in terms of actual, discernable effect on our day-to-day lives and social standing, what does it _mean_."

"I think it means. Um. Something like this," Clark said, and put his hands on the desk close enough to cross his fingers with Lex's, leaned over and kissed Lex on the lips.

There had been a time when Lex had fantasized about this. Had wondered what Clark would taste like, whether the fresh-air flavor of Kansas's open fields would have soaked into his essence, or would it be something else. Something more exotic. More alien. He had stroked himself envisioning the heat of Clark's mouth, had come to the imagined thrum of Clark moaning into his mouth, that underaged, inexperienced, inexpressibly beautiful boy opening himself, giving himself entirely to Lex.

But that had been years ago. The boy was a man, and Lex was older, and Clark would never have given himself completely. The lies would have always come between them, whether or not he had pursued his questions or dropped them, whether Clark would have returned lust with honest lust or with compassionate friendship.

Years ago, and Lex hadn't even had to consciously give up the wanting of it, had never chosen to stop imagining. It had happened anyway, other faces, other bodies floating before his mind's eye or in his bed. He was older and needed it less anyway; needed the time more, for more important things.

Years ago, and no part of him craved this anymore; no remaining piece of him was so weak as to need Clark's pretenses of affection. There had been other lovers, different desires, new love, tamer and more realistic. More real.

Clark's tongue thrust into his mouth, curled around his, wrestling with giddy purposeless drive, and Clark's big hands tightened around his collar, pulling him standing, pulling them closer like he could meld them together, and _fuck_ reality anyway.

Reality was vastly overrated.

Lex's chair had toppled over behind him; he was halfway to kneeling on his desk, and Clark was halfway up on the other side, one knee on the blotter, rocking forward into him. His hands were tangled in Clark's thick black hair and he wondered why they weren't getting sliced to ribbons. Apparently Clark's hair wasn't as resilient as the rest of him. Or something.

"Pair-bonded?" Lex asked.

"Yeah."

"Mate or die?"

"Yeah. Um. Kinda."

There was an ocean of misdirection in that answer but Lex didn't feel like diving in. Not at this particular moment. It would have to wait until he could form complete sentences. Which wasn't likely to be anytime soon, if Clark's hands kept stroking like that, down his sides, over his chest, fingers strong as manufacturing waldos gently teasing a nipple to a hard point. He hadn't even heard the silk tearing when his shirt had been ripped open.

"Bedroom," he said, cursing his own lack of super-speed; Clark's usual flannel had too many damn buttons.

"Why?" Clark sounded plaintive, insofar as it was possible to make out his tone, with his lips fixed to Lex's neck.

"The desk is hell on my knees," Lex got out, in a burst of coherence so great it impressed him. The aching hardness of the stoneware surface was distracting. From other aching hardness he would much prefer to be focusing on.

"What desk?" Clark said, so innocently that Lex should have been warned, but he still jumped when Clark's knee banged down. The black stone gave way with a crack like tectonic plates fracturing, and they were on the floor.

"Clark," Lex said, as Clark used Lex's momentary start to lunge on top of him.

"—that desk—" as Clark wrapped his arms around Lex and nipped kisses on the underside of his throat.

"—was _imported_—" Lex mumbled through Clark's tongue waging war on his.

"—and besides, the floor's hardwood."

Upon which Clark rolled them onto the thick carpet by the fireplace. Actually Lex didn't think he rolled so much as levitated them, and as the carpet was a good nine feet distant, he suspected super-speed was also involved.

Super-speed had other benefits, and Lex was party to most of them. All at the same time. Big warm hands here, then there, then everywhere seeming at once. It was, he thought hazily, a good thing Clark had broached this pair-bonding thing now, rather than waiting until Lex was old enough that a coronary would be a serious peril. At this rate, with luck and appropriate medication, his heart might make it until thirty.

Enough games. His clothes were but a memory, tattered piles some feet away on the hardwood, and Clark's were mostly off. Good enough, as he worked Clark's jeans and boxers further down his hips, palms skidding on the sweat-damp golden skin of his thighs. Clark's cock was uncut, flushed rose and magnificent, and his strangled groan as Lex wrapped his lips around the head echoed off the ceiling, vibrated through him.

Clark nearly broke his neck, thrusting his hips up; Lex shoved him down again with a good deal more force than he ever had used with any lover, to no avail. Pounding his fists against Clark's thighs got his attention just enough for him to lower himself to the floor, though his muscles were quivering with the effort. Lex tightened his grip so savagely that he would have left a normal man bruised, though his fingers barely dented Clark's perfect flesh and his fingernails slid on the smooth skin instead of scratched, like scraping over pliant metal, leaving no sign.

"Mmph!" Lex growled warning, through his mouthful, and Clark moaned and sucked in his breath, biting his bottom lip, trembling all over. Lex had no mercy, sucking and licking with agonizingly slow, long strokes. Pair-bonded or not, this was not going to be over with so quickly. He had always had more control than any of his lovers, able to outlast anyone. That might have been an effect of his meteor-granted health, or else of the willpower drilled into him from birth. Regardless, he hadn't come ahead of intention since he was fourteen. And he hadn't waited this long to have to put up with teenage haste, super-speed be damned. They were adult men—meteor-mutants—aliens—

"Oh, _fuck_!" Clark screamed, with the power sonics to shatter stone, and came in Lex's mouth. It tasted—not like any human man's, and Lex had a palate as qualified as a professional wine-taster's; but not so different as to be unrecognizable. He swallowed, and then allowed himself to look at Clark's face as he withdrew.

Clark was flushed, spots of color delineating the perfection of his cheekbones, lip swollen red where he had worried at it with his own invincible teeth. He was marked, by Lex as surely as if it had been by Lex's own hand, his own mouth; and that the marking was only temporary, only for his eyes at only this moment, made it more exquisite.

"Lex," Clark said, his hand cupping Lex's head, smoothing over his scalp. Lovers before had asked permission before trying that caress, as if it were an injury, a scar that might hurt to the touch. Clark asked for nothing. His touch was gentle, as gentle as he always had to be; like he was holding an eggshell, a butterfly, any human fragile as a spun glass figure to his strength. His other hand, around Lex's cock, was just as gentle, not tentative but achingly cautious, even as Lex thrust into it.

"More," Lex ordered, through gritted teeth; spun glass he might be but he was an unsatisfied figure. Clark closed his grip, fractionally, his smooth skin hardly enough friction to feel—no calluses on his palms; a farmer's life wasn't labor enough to toughen his alien flesh. "_Dammit_," Lex growled, and thrust harder, until he rammed past Clark's hand into his thigh, his hand on Clark's shoulder yanking him closer, his hand around Clark's demanding him to tighten.

"Lex," Clark said, not the post-coital tremulous whisper but a wavering that was more like real fear. "Lex, I've never—not with my powers—I could hurt you—I could've—"

Not just his hands, with that infinite strength—he was invulnerable all over, and if his strength too extended to everything, then he might very well have blown the back of Lex's head off a couple minutes ago.

Lex came into Clark's fist harder than he had in ten years, stars before his eyes and his throat hoarse afterwards. His arms were shaking, holding himself above the floor, above Clark. Then Clark solved that distance by grabbing Lex and pulling him down on top of him like a blanket. His hand was still curved around Lex's skull, fingers splayed to touch as much smooth skin as possible.

Lex could hear him breathing, the air trembling in his lungs. "Lex, I could've—"

"Probably not," Lex said. He couldn't be hotter if the fireplace were blazing, and cooling come was slowly gluing their bellies together. Moving would be annoying later. It wasn't much of an option at all right now, even if Clark's arms around him could have been budged with less than industrial hydraulics. "We're pair-bonded, right? If you're able to bond with alien species, then your people probably has some racial trait to allow for successful intercourse even given a physical mismatch."

"Um," Clark said.

"Clark."

"Um," Clark said again.

"Is there something you want to tell me? About this pair-bonding?"

"Well. Um." Clark's fingers tentatively withdrew from his scalp. Lex tried to pretend he didn't miss their warmth. Gave it up for a lost cause and lifted his head enough to nudge against Clark's hand.

"You said you can't lie to me anymore." Lex considered the wording of that as he idly traced his hand down Clark's neck, fingers playing on the perfect unmarkable smoothness. "Is that part of this pair-bonding? Inability to deceive one's partner?" If that went both ways, it might make certain of his business practices, those arrangements that Clark was never, not in a thousand pair-bonded years, going to agree with, more difficult. Whatever. He could work around it. There was nothing he couldn't adjust, with minimal long-term impact on profits.

"I'm coming out tomorrow," Clark said, abruptly.

"That might be a good idea, if we're going to go public with this bond," Lex said. "Though I hope you've already been open with your friends and family."

"No," Clark said. "Not like that. I mean, that, I. Um. Not like that. But as myself. My real self. With all I can do."

Lex stilled. This many years of jealous guarding, hoarding secrets like a dragon with his gold, and now he was going to share that wealth with the world? "You're telling your secrets. Have an interview with the Daily Planet scheduled?"

"No, not yet—that might not be a bad idea, though—but no. And they won't be _my_ secrets. Exactly. It won't be me, see. I have a costume—Mom helped me with it. Like Ol—like a friend of mine. So I can help people, but no one'll know it's me. Or care, because why would they care about me—someone who can save them, that's what they want. Who it really is, that doesn't matter. As long as I can help them."

Why would they care, all those faceless masses. But he would have. Lex would have cared.

Lex would have known, from the first second of news footage he saw, the first eyewitness report he heard. A boy—a man, in the sky, doing the impossible. Some things are so far beyond rational belief that they must be one of a kind. He would have known instantly.

It would have been spectacular. The ultimate, undeniable realization, and every word that came out of Clark's mouth would have been from the mouth of a proved and branded liar. He wouldn't have had to listen to a single syllable.

But he had listened today, before that crucial moment.

And in retrospect, it had been spectacular. Actually even in the moment itself it had been pretty damn amazing.

Worth it, even.

"But you told me the truth. As you, and not in costume." Unless Clark was planning to embark on this new career as Flannel-man. The Plaid Wonder?

"Not in costume, no. You'll know I'm in costume when you see it, trust me." Clark's arms tightened around him, not enough to hurt, but almost. "No more lying, Lex. I'm sick of it and you would've figured it out anyway and I didn't want that. I didn't want to go to you and have you look at me and see—this person I'm going to be. This..."

"This hero. This superhero."

"Um. Yeah. God, that sounds so _stupid_." Clark sounded fifteen again, as he banged his head back against the floor, fortunately lightly enough not to crack the hardwood.

"Clark," Lex said. "No more lying."

"Yeah."

"So. The pair-bonding?"

"Ah." Lex could feel Clark fidget. Lex could feel just about every part of Clark. It was undeniably delightful. "So. It's not a lie. Exactly."

"Exactly."

"_Iren-marr_," Clark said, the alien words rolling off his definite Midwestern tongue with charming fluency.

"Well, it rhymes with pon farr," Lex noted, encouragingly.

"It means pair-bond," Clark said. "And it is—was—a Kryptonian custom. Very old and respected. Forged between mated pairs, sealed with the first kiss. Then, sometime later, when the pair was ready, they would have another ceremony to consecrate the bond."

"Consecrate."

"Consummate it. Umm. If both members wanted to."

"I see."

"It's a very old custom, they take it—took it—very seriously."

"I see."

"And from what I can tell of my birth parents, they were very much traditionalists, holding with the old ways, not so much with the new ones that got the planet destroyed."

"I see."

"And you know my mom, she's pretty traditionalist, too, and she understands these are my people's customs, as much as any Earth or Kansas ones."

"'Mate or die,' Clark?"

"Well. Umm. I thought. Maybe if you were distracted, you wouldn't. Be. Umm."

"As angry as I would have been otherwise."

"As you had a right to be," Clark said. "I've been a jerk. I mean, so have you. A lot. But I've been one, too."

"Yeah, you have."

"And it sounded better than going down on one knee and offering you a ring."

"Actually," Lex said, propping his head on his chin to look at Clark's face, "I rather like the sound of that going down part."

Clark's ears reddened. Mostly naked, jeans around his ankles, sticky with come and sweat from the heat of a nude man lying on top of him, possibly floating a few inches above the rug (Lex hadn't yet reached a hand down to verify this, but the angle of the mantelpiece was subtly but decidedly unaccountable otherwise) and Clark blushed at adolescent innuendo.

"So," Lex said, adjusting himself in such a way that he might only be innocently seeking a more comfortable position, even as their skin rubbed in most interesting places. "This ceremony—the consecration. What exactly does it entail? I'd prefer not to commit any interplanetary faux pas's."

"Actually..." Clark squirmed, his gaze shifting away. "That's. Going to be. It's pretty difficult, actually. The pair-bonding, it's supposed to be—um. Between a male and a female."

"A man and a woman."

"Yeah. And the woman's supposed to. Umm. You know. Get pregnant."

"Your birth parents sent you across a galaxy to inflict their own ridiculous heteronormative values upon a culture just on the cusp of moving past such absurdity?"

"My birth parents were kind of dicks, turns out," Clark confessed.

"Not to mention, how are you supposed to impregnate an alien female? The odds that your species is genetically compatible with _homo sapiens_ are—too small to bother computing."

"That's probably why the AI didn't bring up any of it until I asked," Clark mumbled.

Lex considered this, in light of Clark's confession. In light of Clark's honesty. In light of Clark's upcoming debut as a superhero. In light of Clark's rising erection, hard beneath him. Not what a teenage alien's super-stamina must have been, but not bad. Not bad at all. "Clark?"

"Yeah?"

There was going to be a lot to work out. An awful damn lot. Starting with his own confessions and moving on from there. But for now, there was Clark under him.

For now, before tomorrow could come, Lex closed his eyes and allowed his long-nurtured pyre to be baptized, washed away in this rising tide. "Does diamond work for you? Or something less traditional?"

"Huh?"

"For the ring. You people have your engagement customs, we have ours. I wouldn't want to be remiss."

"Lex!"

"Your mother can be quite traditional, as you said."

"_Lex_."

"And you—"

Clark sealed off further words with a kiss to consummate, to consecrate, as thoroughly as any impossible hybrid fetus.

Kryptonians don't need to breathe, either, Lex discovered. He was almost seeing spots from the lack of oxygen when the kiss finally broke, and Clark wasn't even winded. Though the color was back in his face, and his eyes were brilliant green.

"How about sapphire?" Clark said. "Or is there some other blue stone? Ruby would go with the cape, but a red jewel...that'd freak some people out."

"Lapis lazuli is a striking blue. Or tanzanite, that would be fittingly extraordinary."

"Expensive, huh. And a yellow gold band. That'll match pretty well, I think."

"Match what? Your shirt?" The blue flannel flung up over the ceiling fan was generally intact. His mother would no doubt thriftily sew the buttons back on.

"No," Clark said, "not that shirt. You'll see. Tomorrow," he promised, and kissed Lex again, open-mouthed, urgent. Honestly; and Lex sank into it, this desire, this alien strength, this warm and wanted truth.


End file.
